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The Guardian reports on research from Aon Consulting which has found that the value of British workers’ pension pots has dropped by a third over the past year, thanks to the tumbling stock market. In fact, this story is all over the headlines today – which is hardly surprising because it’s a pretty good story – billions of pounds slashed from the pensions of poor downtrodden workers, people having to work longer to top up the difference, scary stuff indeed. Butis it really that big a deal? In reality stock markets fluctuate pretty wildly over the short term, but even when you take into account events like the great depression, world wars and 9/11, they almost always bounce...

And that’s not just us being our usual gloomy selves – Charles Bean, deputy governor of the Bank of England, reckons that we’re now facing the worst financial crisis in human history. Just think about that for a second, possibly the worst financial crisis in human history and it’s not been caused by a world war or some kind of massive natural disaster, but by the financial industry whipping itself up into a frenzy of greed while incompetent authorities sat idly by and ignored the warning signs time and time again. Maybe Charley’s being a little too pessimistic, but things are definitely looking bleak right now. This week official figures showed that the gross domestic product (GDP) –...